Homeopathy is a scam!

Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine that was made up 200 years ago by a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann who was trying to improve on the then current medical practice of blood letting. But while homeopathy is usually less dangerous than blood letting, which was fatal to many of its patients, including most likely, George Washington, it is equally as effective. By which I mean to say categorically that it’s equally ineffective, which is why it might be dangerous – if truly effective medication is either not sought or refused. Homeopathy is based on the notion that “like cures like” – that a little of something causing illness would somehow cure it (and we’ll talk later about what is meant in homeopathy by the word “little,” which is more like non-existent). Bear in mind, however, that 200 years ago they had no idea what caused most illnesses so the things they used to create homeopathic remedies were akin to Shakespeare’s eye of newt and toe of frog. But these arcane formulas have been handed down as received wisdom and are still used today – one extremely popular homeopathic flu remedy used the world over and called Oscillococcinum, for example, is made from duck heart and liver.

Many people mistakenly believe that homeopathy is similar to immunization but the two are fundamentally different. For immunization, a little bit of a known causative agent (e.g., of diphtheria, tetanus or whooping cough) is injected into a person because it is a scientific fact that this will induce an immune response and therefore prevent future illness. The effectiveness of immunization has been proved countless times and has improved people’s health the world over and prevented millions (probably hundreds of millions) of needless deaths from a wide variety of infectious diseases. In homeopathy, a “little” bit of some mumbo-jumbo formulation that is in no way known to be causative of anything, is administered in an effort directly to cure an already present illness – there’s no immune stimulation involved at all. Moreover, homeopathic remedies have never been shown in any rigorously done medical research to be any more effective than placebo at curing anything (they have occasionally been shown to have some marginal efficacy in poorly done studies that haven’t been replicated, but in 200 years there’s been no definitive scientific proof that it works better than placebo).

Homeopathy is based on principles that are so unscientific it’s a wonder so many people fall for it. Yet they do and pay lots of money for the privilege. So if you like paying a lot but getting little in return then homeopathy is for you. That’s because there’s literally nothing in a homeopathic remedy other than the diluent, be it water, alcohol or lactose (milk sugar), in which the starting ingredient is dissolved. In fact, if there were anything else present it wouldn’t be homeopathic. That’s because homeopathic remedies start with an ingredient that’s thought to be important for the cure of some disease (like the duck liver noted above), but then they dilute it until there is nothing left of the original material (that’s right, I’m not making this up, literally nothing, as explained below). With nothing physically remaining, believers in homeopathy rely on some “memory” of the original ingredient to produce the hoped for cure.

Look at any homeopathic remedy and you’ll find a number like 6, 12, 30 or 200 and a letter, usually X or C (so you’ll see 6X or 200C, or some other combination). The number tells you how many times the original ingredient underwent dilution and the letter tells you whether each successive dilution was either 10-fold (X) or 100-fold (C). The X and C come from the Greek numbering system where X=10 and C=100. For example, a 6X product starts with one part of the original stuff and mixes that with nine parts of the diluent, let’s say water. That makes a one-tenth dilution or a 1X product. Then one part of that is then mixed with nine parts of water for a 2X (one one hundredth) and so on. At 6X, the dilution is one part of the original ingredient in 1 million parts of water. For C type dilutions, they take one part of the ingredient and mix it with 99 parts of diluent so that the first dilution is one one-hundredth (or 2X). For example, Oscillococcinum, which I mentioned earlier, is diluted 200C, which means that the original duck parts were diluted 200 times, each time at a hundred-fold dilution (that would be 1 part taken to a 400 zeros-fold dilution!). The laws of chemistry tell us that the point at which there’s nothing left of the original material is 12C (24X), but they keep on making 100-fold dilutions 188 more times after that.

You’ll also sometimes hear about the “potency” of homeopathic remedies. Here again, less is more because in homeopathy, the more dilute the more potent. So a 6X product would be considered low-potency because it’s only been diluted to one in a million, while the 200C flu remedy would be considered high-potency because it’s so dilute we don’t even have words to describe it! Talk about tortured logic…

You may wonder why there have to be successive dilutions? Why not just do it all once? That’s because of another component of the homeopathic process, which happens at each step in the dilution process. This is where the real magic is thought to occur because the container holding the material is shaken vigorously in a process called “succussion.” Every time a dilution is made the container is succussed (i.e., shaken), which somehow potentiates the effect and leaves a lasting memory or some form of imprint of the original substance in the diluent. So what you purchase in the store is basically water (or whatever the diluent is), without a single molecule of the original material, that allegedly has been altered in some way that, when ingested, results in healing. One can only wonder how the water knows to “remember” the specific healing ingredient, as opposed to any other molecule of whatever else might have been in the water to begin with (or introduced along the way of dilution).

There is no question that homeopathy, if it works at all, works either by the placebo effect or through spontaneous remission (i.e., many illnesses are self-limited regardless of treatment or the lack thereof). Of course, placebo effects can be powerful and can result in dramatic symptom relief. Some people feel that this alone can justify the use of homeopathy. The problems are several, however. First, placebos are not always effective. Second, there may well be a much more effective treatment available that would cure the patient more reliably and more quickly. Third, the patient’s illness may get worse while he or she is receiving the placebo. Fourth, there is the cost factor, which means, how much do you want to pay for a placebo, especially when it’s marketed, without supporting research, as being effective?

I am sure that most practicing homeopaths are very well-intentioned and have their patient’s best interests at heart. One of the tenets of homeopathy is that its remedies, albeit weird – starting with strange stuff and then diluting it till there’s nothing left, are highly individualized. The practitioner spends a lot of time with the patient taking an extremely detailed history and getting a thorough understanding of his or her overall medical situation (please note that you can buy homeopathic remedies on your own at any drug store or over the internet, but, in addition, you can also go to see a practicing homeopath who will listen to your story and make recommendations based on the theories of homeopathy). Because the practitioner spends so much time talking with the patient, a good analogy for this type of healing art would be psychotherapy. After all, what does a psychotherapist (i.e., a non-prescribing psychologist) do but listen and talk? It’s well known that this type of interaction can have therapeutic effects, even in the absence of prescribed medication.

I’ve mentioned the homeopathic flu remedy called Oscillococcinum several times. I noted that it’s made from duck heart and liver, but what I didn’t tell you is that according to an article in U.S. News and World Report an entire year’s worth of the product is made from the organs of one duck. And the company that makes it, Bioron, sells well over $20 million worth of it a year. So I’d like to end with a quote from Edzard Ernst, M.D. and Simon Singh, in their recent book, “Trick or Treament“:

Remedies free of active ingredients worth $20 million derived from a single duck? This has to be the ultimate form of medical quackery.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ed Zimney, MD

Ed is a physician with more than 30 years of experience. He’s held positions in drug advertising review, drug safety surveillance, medical information and marketing with several bio/pharmaceutical companies.